Sony FW with external monitor blurry

I just bought the new Sony FW laptop -- and its own display looks great, but when I attach an external monitor, that monitor will look blurry. I tried both a Sony monitor and a Dell monitor and the Sony FW would always display a blurry image on anything attached to its VGA port. I've tried adjusting to all different screen resolutions and refresh rates, but nothing worked. The ATI Radeon driver on my Sony appears up to date when it did an update driver check. My HP laptop has no problem displaying a crisp image on both the Sony and Dell monitors attached externally.

Does anyone else have this problem? I'm wondering if I should return this laptop or not.

 

Looks like you tried everything (resolution would have been my guess...)
Maybe your VGA port is faulty?
Have you used the same cable? That could be faulty too...

 

There's several things you can do. Try cleaning out the VGA port (preferably with a duster). Also, try using a different cable. If the problem persists, contact Sony customer service/support. I'm sure they'll be able to help.

 

I would say it's not a fair test because the VGA port is analogue and the internal screen will presumably be connected by a digital means? Also, are you sure you're using the native resolution of the external monitors? If not it would look blurry maybe. Just a couple of ideas.

 

I'd try a different cable.
I don't know whether you used a vga cable with ferrite beads. If not, you can try one with them.

 

Do your monitors accept an HDMI input? If so, you might wanna see how it looks that way.

 

Or get HDMI to DVI cable.

 

Thanks for the input. Unfortunately my monitors don't take HDMI or DVI (the FW doesn't have DVI anyway). I tried talking two hours with Sony tech support but they couldn't come up with a solution. Wondering if this was a problem with my laptop or all the new Sony FW laptops, I went to a couple Best Buys and asked the sales people to plug in external monitors into the Sony FWs. They obliged and a Westinghouse LCD was plugged in an FW that had just the Intel graphics card... and then a Dell LCD was plugged into an FW with the ATI Radeon graphics card like the FW I have. Both of them had the same kind of dim and poor image (looks like a Photoshop picture with a slight Gaussian blur applied) that my FW has when the VGA port is used.

I had them plug my FW into a couple monitors... some no-name brand and a different Dell one. The other Dell looked not as bad... it still was not as good as any other computer including my Pentium 2 plugged into an external, but it wasn't as bad as all other others. Still, this affects me because a lot of times for presentations, the projectors use VGA ports. I'll try posting this on the FW owner thread to see if other people have this same problem with their FWs.

 

I just went through this today with my FZ and a Sony external LCD. At first it looked terrible, so I started poking around in the settings. The refresh rate was set at 60Hz, but offered an option of 75 Hz. Changing that to 75 did the trick and now it looks perfect.

 

hi bsulu,
i was wondering if you found any fix for the problem.
i also recently bought a sony laptop and am having the same problem. i've tried changing the 60hz to 75hz. i've also tried changing some other things, but no luck.
thank you for any help,
mike

 

Hi all,

I'm facing the same issue...

I would be so happy if somebody could point me in the right direction.

Thank you!!
J.